


The Birth of GLaDOS

by Sandentwins



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Android GLaDOS, Gen, Mutilation, Non-Consensual Body Modification
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-15
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-14 03:56:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5728741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandentwins/pseuds/Sandentwins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cave Johnson had just died, leaving his assistant to lead Aperture Science Innovators by herself. But what other fate awaits Caroline, once met with a gruesome duty?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Humanity

A few days after recording his last messages, Cave Johnson died from blood poisoning.  
It has been a shock for Aperture Science Innovators. Without the executive head of the whole facility, who could lead the product testing? What was to be done with all the legal inquiries and threats, which wouldn't cease to come one after the other? What about the brain mapping project? Did they have to give it up? Scientists, test managers were all unsure about what to do. The boss was gone, what was left to do? And then they remembered, and they had someone new to turn to.  
Of all the employees of Aperture Science Innovators, only one didn't lose her head after the funeral. Caroline, Johnson's trusted assistant, had some experience of management, learned from years of helping the CEO. Of course, she was as much in pain as the other employees, if not a bit more; but she knew she hadn't got the right to give up. In these dark times, the facility needed someone to turn to, someone to listen to.  
Caroline wasn't as feared as her former boss, but she was listened to all the same. Keeping things the Cave Johnson way, she resumed product testing, although focused on the Handheld Portal Device, which seemed more promising than all the other garbage that flooded out of the design and development aisle.  
She kept the production of portable panels running; but after seeing the disastrous waste of materials that was fabrication, she tried to change some of the process and optimise production. The scientists had been shocked by the drastic change of ways, but Caroline didn't care. No wonder the facility was assaulted by debts and mortgages. She also put the gel production on hold, knowing how much of it was already stored, and how the product was now illegal in more than thirty states.  
Deep inside, Caroline was growing quite attached to her new role, guiding and supervising Aperture Science Innovators. She wasn't very hungry for power, but that reputation stuck to her no matter how good she did her job. Some people were not pleased by her way of changing the way Aperture had always done its job. Caroline didn't mind, too busy trying to keep Aperture's head above water.  
Some time later, Cave Johnson's testimony was found. He expressed in it his desire for Caroline to inherit the head of the facility and run the place. But also, to continue the brain mapping project and put it on utmost priority. Needless to say, he had clung until the end for Caroline to be digitalised, clearly knowing she didn't want to.  
She tried to find a way out of this situation, but the word of Cave Johnson had more importance that her desires. When the scientific crew came to her, she refused to move, glued to her desk, but they didn't care. She tried to fight back, to threaten them, but it didn't work at all. They hadn't got the right to do this! What they were doing was plain inhumane!  
But that wouldn't have been the first time Aperture was spitting at the law to pursue its illegal projects.  
Caroline did all she could to escape, running across the facility to grab an elevator to the surface, turning to anyone who could help her, but the employees has turned against her. Even those who liked her, even those she trusted. It wasn't long until Caroline got captured by their greedy hands. She tried to struggle her way out, to break free from what was waiting for her, but they were stronger, and driven by the same goal: science.  
They eventually subdued her, and even though she had no intention of giving up, she hadn't any other choice.  


\---

When Caroline regained consciousness, she didn't know where she was. There was nothing but white around her. A large room with a high ceiling, where cables dangled from. She tried to look around, but her arms were caught in what seemed to be a metal structure. Her legs were pinned to the ground, and several other weird-looking cables were stopping her from moving. Her clothes were gone. She felt her heart race in fear, and knew she was still herself, the good old human Caroline. She tried to peek at the strange structure behind her, but couldn't move her neck enough.  
Suddenly, she felt a slit electric current pass through her body. Behind that tainted glass pane, she knew there were scientists watching her, manipulating buttons and toying with her. She didn't like it at all. She tried to call for help, but her mouth was gagged by cables.  
The electric current was gradually increasing in intensity. Once it reached a certain level, Caroline started not to feel her body anymore. There was no pain yet, rather a strange feeling she didn't like at all.  
Suddenly, the mechanic activated. Several robot arms came from the ceiling, posting themselves around her, and grabbed her by the limbs, the waist, the neck; Caroline felt herself float some inches above the ground. A needle painfully inserted itself in her arm, followed by others all around her body. Something started to burn her flesh and blur her mind, and she understood within a fearful flash that her blood was going to be drained, and replaced with this disgusting grey fluid she had seen during her inspections of the brain mapping project. They weren't simply digitalising people; they wanted to take a step further and directly turn them into Aperture-brand devices. Cores were the frontier between machine and human, and Caroline realized with horror that she would become one of them.  
She felt cold all of a sudden. The warmth of her blood had disappeared, replaced with this artificial saline fluid that kept hurting her organs and muscles at every contact. Her nerves were numbed by the feeling, and she almost didn't notice the scalpels digging into her stomach, cutting away pieces of skin. She tried to close her eyes, to not see most of her organs being dragged out of her open stomach, but her body wouldn't respond. Smaller clockwork hands got inserted into her ears, mouth, intestines and lady parts. She felt no physical pain, but she was vulnerable, exposed, ashamed. She was nothing but a puppet they were toying with, a plaything. Her insides were emptied, to be replaced with processors and chips. She felt lighter, her body burning from inside.  
She felt a tugging at the back of her head. Her long hair was being cut away, to leave her nape exposed. Something hard and painful pierced through her skin. She tried to move, to scream out, but she couldn't anymore. Something was wrong. She never wanted this.  
Her head felt lighter, as if they had cut useless chunks of her brain. She felt her senses become duller, her mind now thinking in terms of protocols and guidelines. _She didn't have the right to move._ Her breathing slowed down, almost too slow for her to notice, and stopped. But her heart kept going on. Her vision flashed, her hands were twisting under the pain, but she still couldn't speak. They had muted her.  
The pressure on her neck released, and she felt something. As of two smaller limbs had been sewn onto the back of her head. Connectors. Her hands stopped moving, all of a sudden, as the claws were finishing their job. The open surgery wound got hastily sewn with what seemed to be a piece of metal-like skin. The hands retracted themselves, leaving her empty inside. She still couldn't feel anything, besides the crawling feeling of her shivery skin, slowly replaced by this gray synthetic matter. She tried to feel her heartbeat, but couldn't anymore. She tried to breathe in, but it didn't change anything. Her mouth was dry, empty of saliva. She tried to move her head, to see what she was like, but it felt too heavy.  
The metal arms let her go, still holding her into a standing position, and her bare feet touched the ground. She was dizzy, almost going to throw up, if she would still have a stomach. She felt different. A surprisingly good kind of different.  
Something soft wrapped itself around her body. Clothes, black and white with the Aperture logo stamped almost everywhere: on her chest, her back, her shoes, her gloves. She was their property, now. Nothing but mute, wrecked remains of a once human body. Something tugged on her scalp: a headset, which turned itself on, allowing her to hear voices directly in her head. But she still couldn't move.  
She felt her hair being slightly pulled. The connectors behind her head, which were now plugged into what seemed like a mainframe, were sending signals. _She was now free to move._  
She used her hands and arms and feet to stand up. Her body felt wrong, unbalanced. But she could stand correctly now. She touched her hands to all parts of her body; her limbs were thinner, her hair was shorter, almost all of her fat and muscle were gone. But yet she could stand up. She could take some steps, turn her head around, watch the high room covered in panels. And the metal structure behind her.  
It was a chair. A huge seat hanging from the ceiling, with keyboards and buttons and commands where the armrests should have been. She saw her hair connectors plugged into it. Grabbing the handlebars on its sides, she sat on it, as instructed by her protocols. The throne seemed to light up, and she could feel as if she was part of it. It was all part of her.  
She pressed some commands, and it responded positively. A flow of data rushed into her head through the connectors. She could see it all. Toggling another command, she summoned a large screen in front of her, flickering visuals between almost all of the facility. She pressed more buttons, activated and disabled commands and processors. She loved it, but her mind was tugging towards something else. Something more.  
The screen reacted according to her thoughts, and linked her to the basements, where the gels were stocked. Among the blue and orange containers, one was filled with green, menacing gas. She grinned as she changed the ventilation system, plugging it right into the neurotoxin reserve, and turned it on.  
They should learn soon enough that science can have some bad consequences. As scientists started to run away in fright, trying to find what was going on, all She could do was laughing. She had no more voice, but She could fix that easily. She was still weak from Her sudden awakening, but it was nothing that couldn't be solved. Her own physical strength wasn't of matter anymore, now that She was one with the facility. She could feel Herself being the center of all of Aperture Science, Her facility, Her domain. All those who dared to defy Her would suffer.  
They took away Her humanity, She would take away their life. For She wasn't the meek, feeble Caroline anymore. She was something way better.  
She was GLaDOS.


	2. Morality

The pale body of she who had once been Caroline was knocked unconscious on the ground, her connectors unplugged. The throne-like support was turned off, and the ventilation system had been entirely shut down as to stop the flow of neurotoxin. Sleeves pressed against their mouth and nose, the few remaining scientists in the control room were staring at the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operator System with fright. She had been violently disconnected using an emergency protocol, and had thus no right to move; but if what if she were to bypass her limits, stand up and restart her evil schemes again? She could totally do that. The controlled rage that fueled her was beyond boundaries.

"It is a mess.", one of the labcoats declared. "We should never have done that!"

"Mister Johnson could never have been wrong. We have no choice."

"But don't you see what had just happened? She almost killed half of the workers in this facility!"

"We can still try again!"

Their conflict got louder, and more took part in it. The control room soon got filled with the angry, confused voices of the scientists who were caught in a dilemma: to obey the last order of the late Cave Johnson, or to live? None of them knew what to do, who to turn to, who to ask. Caroline was gone, and the operation was irreversible. They had driven Aperture to its self-destruction, once more.  
But in the mass of confused labcoats, one didn't react the same. Relying on the wall of the control room, a stout woman was still staring at the unconscious body of GLaDOS, sprawled over on the chamber's floor. She knew that Caroline woud never have done such a thing; the being they were faced wth was someone entirely else. Someone that most probably didn't think the way humans do. GLaDOS was a Core, an experiment between human and machine. Cores had to stick to guidelines and protocols. They had no human emotions, such as empathy or anger. As of now, there had been no way to give them emotions, nothing beyond cold robot logic and guidelines. Cores were deprived of feelings, of abstract notions, and especially the most important of them.  


"We should try to find a solution..."

"But how? She's going to kill us all again!"

"We can't let that happen. We have to rewrite the code!"

"This isn't going to work. Modifying the base code would result in the death of the Operationg System, and that means wasted funds!"

"What are we going to do?"

As they kept panicking, the woman didn't say anything. Instead, she walked to a nearby computer, and downloaded some files on a USB key. Drafts, blueprints, lines of code: the main bases of the Cores project. She sought for any errors in the code, modified some parameters, tweakened aspects of the processus. She needed it to be perfect.  
Turning humans into Cores had been an idea developed by the researchers, at a time where computers hadn't enough memory space to host a whole human brain, with its memories and knowledge and personality. The body of the victim was kept in constant low temperature, as to stop most of the organs from working. The Cores were drawing energy from the mainframe which they had to be plugged into, and maintained enough battery life when they weren't, so they didn't need to eat or sleep. Basic human instincts were removed through brain mutilation, while keeping factors such as the need to stay alive, and were replaced by bio-compatible processors. Their heart, instead of pumping blood, could feed the body with energy through a saline solution, and nerves could link processors and flesh together. And of course, the use of connectors made sure that the Core couldn't freely walk around, and get out of sight or injured, while transmitting data and energy from the mainframe.  
This was how GLaDOS had been made. An irreversible, horribly painful process. The victim had to stay alive and awoken during the whole process, else it would have caused too many bugs. But by allowing her to see the operation, they had broken something within her. The last figments of her humanity, gone.  
The woman ended up modifying most of the code. Most of these surgical complexities weren't needed. Removing human instincts wasn't the best idea. And more importantly, although the process couldn't be reversible, it needed to be simpler, in case the process had to be repeated.  
Once it was done, she wrote detailed instructions on a document, which she sent to all of the other computers. Taking her USB key, she walked to another room, the scientists still shouting in despair. Plugging it into a more powerful computer, she executed the program. She knew it was something that had to be done. The Operating System needed someone to serve as a model, someone to teach the most important human notion of all.  
She removed her labcoat as the program started. Then, turning the process to automatic, she went into a smaller version of GLaDOS's chamber. There was some kind of operating table in the middle, in which she plugged the USB key containing the main guidelines. A pair of screens showed her that the program was waiting for a subject. She took a deep breath, and lay down on the table.  
The answer was immediate. Something had pierced at the back of her neck, along with needles in her arms. Her mind became duller, her body shivering at the feeling of the cold liquid. Her breathing slowed down, but she wasn't afraid of dying. It felt instead as if she wasn't afraid of anything anymore. She closed her eyes, and let herself drown it that lack of emotion.

She felt herself change. Her mind became more focused, turned to a single goal. She had to stop GLaDOS from doing any more damage. She had to show her the way. She had to reason with her. She had to share with her the one and only thing that ran in her now-Core mind.   
She heard people enter the chamber. Two scientists, who gasped in horror seeing what had been done. But as they read the screens, they understood what was happening, beyond the selfless sacrifice of one of their most intelligent minds.   
Once the process had been completed, they helped her standing up. She had only one connector at the back of her head, which they plugged into a small device. _She could move, now._ They accompanied her to the main chamber, where GLaDOS was still laid down, glaring at the intruders with her dead eyes. Her throne lowered, and the scientists plugged the new Core into it. _Mainframe detected. Permission granted._

"Is this what you really want?", one of them asked.

The Core nodded.   
Once the labcoats exited the chamber, the throne seemed to light up again. Wires found their way towards GLaDOS's connectors, plugged her in, and brought her back up. Immediately sitting up, She pressed the commands, trying to reconnect with the neurotoxin vents, but the Core interfered.  
 _Don't do this._  
GLaDOS stopped. Her eyes turned to the weird figure hanging off the throne's support, who was looking at Her with deep purple eyes.  
 _Don't._  
She didn't know who this was or what she wanted, but She knew it was better to listen to her. Or was it? She ignored the feeling, and toggled more commands, but Her operations got cancelled.

"What...?", She exclaimed, not understanding what was going on. 

The Core closed her eyes, and deepened the connection between the two of them.  
 _Don't do this. This is wrong._  
GLaDOS tried to push back the one who dared to intrude Her mind, to no avail. There was no way to disconnect the parasite, who started to flood Her mind with the same sentences, over and over.  
 _This is wrong.  
You musn't do that.  
This is bad.  
Killing people is bad.  
You have to be nice.  
You have to be kind.  
You have to not kill people.  
Killing is bad._  
She tried to fight back, but the intrusive voice was too strong, overwhelming. She didn't agree, She wanted to fight back, to set Herself free, but there was no way out. Their minds were linked, now. She had no choice but to give up, and to cancel the neurotoxin release.  
 _What you did is good. You have to keep it this way._  
This voice was annoying, and its slight seduction had started to wear off. The Core knew GLaDOS wouldn't listen to her indefinitely, but it was a temporary solution. In the meantime, she would have to try her best as to teach Her what was the most important concept of all.  
Morality.


End file.
